Q Acoustics Concept 20

A number of years ago my Father was looking for pair of bookshelf speakers. He asked me for suggestions with a budget of about $500 or $600. I had to spend time with a pair of Q Acoustics 3050 towers (which you can read about here) and I was really impressed so I was pretty certain that a pair of Q Acoustics Concept 20s would suit the bill and that was my recommendation to him. He purchased a pair in white which was also my recommendation but I have since then gotten over my white speaker faze so I kind of wish they were black now. Tastes change.

Fast forward to today. I asked my Father if I could borrow his pair of Concept 20s so I could get to know them a little bit and compare them to my Bowers and Wilkins 705s2 bookshelf speakers. I promised him that I would take great care of them because when I was growing up I sometimes played with his stereo systems in a not so responsible way and I believe he still holds onto that to this day (understandably so).

I've been using my Bowers & Wilkins speakers with my Rotel gear (RC 1590 / RB 1582) for about four years now so obviously I'm very familiar with my system's capabilities. That said, after initially connecting the Q Acoustics Concept 20s to my system there was an immediate downgrade to frequencies at about 60 Hz and below. I remember a number of years ago ago a speaker salesman was trying to sell me new speakers and he told me that my 705s2 speakers had "no bass". I believed him but it didn't make a sale for him. Since then I've learned that these 705 speakers are quite capable of producing a lot of bass information down to at least 40 Hz. The specifications for the 705 speakers state that they go down to 50 Hz but I think those are very conservative ratings. All that to say that the Q Acoustics lack authority in the bass department but when listening to the song The Great Escape from Cinnamon Chaser there seems to be ample amount of low frequency information and it's really quite nice. Another interesting note on bass frequencies which I found it to be quite surprising is that at the beginning of the track Apophenia by Mr. Bill there is a very low bass note that gets played repeatedly and the Concept 20s produce the sound where is nicely audible but they lack any real authority behind it. But still impressive. So, electronica, EDM, and other styles of electronic music work pretty well with these. Nearfield, small room… no problem.

I fancy listening to heavy metal so I threw some sludgy agro grind music selections at the Concept 20s to see how they would weather the storm. As much as I love metal music, it can be quickly fatiguing on the ears on speakers that are voiced with a bump in the treble. I knew that my Bowers 705 speakers are voiced to be very revealing with high frequencies which can lend to ear fatigue (although I don't really experienced that with them) but I assumed that the soft dome tweeter on the Concepts would present a more subdued presentation with all of the screaming, symbol crashes, and shrieking of electric guitars that most of my favourite metal tracks employ but after listening to a number of tracks from my metal playlists I soon realized just how good the tweeter is on the 705s2 speakers. I'm spoiled. Heavy metal is just a little too much for the Concept 20s to Control. They don't really seem capable of handling all of the information that heavy metal music delivers to them. So… they don't do so good on that genre of music. My Bowers have become more impressive to me while going through this experience.

Next I put on the track Black Ice by Jeff Lorber Fusion which is one of those perfect sounding smooth jazz compress tracks that literally sounds good on any speaker and guess what?… totally enjoyable. Not surprising. Great speaker for smooth jazz. If you can stomach smooth jazz. I can handle small doses. The song One Point Five by the Steve Gadd Band is a far less compressed Jazz track that I think I will forever love as I never seem to grow tired of it. Playing it on the Concept 20s was fun and exciting and there weren’t any notes in the track where the Concepts couldn't reproduce convincingly. Comparing with the Bowers 705 the Concepts lack the scale in that they generally sound smaller which is a given as the speakers sit lower by at least 6 inches just because of the stands I was using and the Concepts utilize a 5 1/4 inch midrange / bass driver instead of the 6.5 found in the 705s. So yeah the 705s are going to sound bigger. No surprises… Concepts are still great with this genre of music.

Singer-songwriter music sounds great on the Concepts. They seem to have a natural tone that favour music with acoustic guitars and voices. It's like they were designed for that. But really any speakers can sound good doing that… At least most of them. It's not hard because the information the speakers have to reproduce is more sparse compared to complicated jazz tracks or overwhelming metal tracks. Playing the track Be Around by Ocia Elliott is really nice on the concepts. I also played Everything I Had by Sun June which sounded really nice. There's a nice drumbeat that rolls along with the instruments and vocals and it's just a pleasant experience. No complaints.

Off to Pop Music land… Jon Bellion’s song Blu (Acoustic) displays the Concepts ability to image but for whatever reason most popular pop songs fall flat on the Concepts. Like it's bad. I remember reading article from What HiFi? and their conclusion on the Concept 20s was that it could do no wrong within this price point and they “punched above their weight class" (which is something cliché you hear in hi-fi reviews…) and that they were good with all music. It could be my equipment pairing but I could not disagree more. This speaker seems to be very choosy as to what it sounds good with. Music that I know very well and I have listen to for years with enjoyment actually made me cringe on the concept 20s. I have to conclude that my findings are the result of my room and equipment or the online review was bought and paid for by the Company.

Another word on voicing. I feel like I can hear refraction from the tweeter off the face the speaker. And I think it's more obvious to me because that issue is nonexistent with my Bowers 705's tweeter on top design. So as I continue to listen I realized that that refraction colors everything I listen to. It's like the midrange is bumped up and it seems kind of nasally whereas my Bowers have more of a V curve with the mid range making the mid range sound more recessed. Because I was really curious to see the voicing differences I connected one of the Concept 20s to the left channel and one of my 705s2 to the right channel and panned back and forth on a number of different tracks and that really showed the differences. The Concepts mid range is bumped up considerably compared to the 705 (as noted above). Bass frequencies on the 705 is far more controlled and present than the Concepts. And finally, the high frequencies produced from the Bowers are more detailed and softer compared to the Concepts which I found a be quite surprising because I figured that the soft dome tweeter on the Concepts would be more subdued over the metal dome tweeters on the 705s2.

Overall the main thing I take away from this little left and right experiment is that I really like the V-shaped tone of the Bowers. It's an easier listen. Smoother overall. Also, whenever I played complicated music that has more than just a couple of instruments I found that the Concepts just got messy and couldn't keep up with all of the information being sent to them which isn't the case at all with the 705s2. I know the price difference is great between these two speakers and it really shows in their abilities to reproduce music but I was hoping to be more impressed with the Concepts as all of the reviews seem to be really good. I guess you can't believe everything you read on the Internet.

‌‌Thanks for reading! Happy listening!